Saturday, 29 July 2017

BOSTON'S OTHER BABE: BABE PARILLI, THE QUARTERBACK'S LIFE

Looking at the life
of Babe Parilli, who died recently, was more compelling than I'd
thought it would be, for not only was Parilli probably the first star
the Boston Patriots ever had, and one of the biggest names in the
early years of the AFL. Parilli was known as a leader, an erratic but
strong-armed quarterback not afraid to take chances, and was a decent
runner, especially in his early years. He was also good looking and
known to enjoy a good time. Babe was in many ways a poster boy for
the life of NFL quarterbacks in the 1950s, and of those retreads and
journeymen who populated the position in the early years of the AFL
as well.

The Babe was, until
Tom Brady's 2007 season, still the Pats' record holder for TD passes
in a season; Brady had broken his yardage mark in 2002. Parilli's
1964 season was one of the biggest of any AFL season, 3.465 yards and
31 touchdowns. The shortlist of great Patriots' quarterbacks is very
short indeed. Steve Grogan is the gridiron embodiment of the
franchise for its first four decades, gritty, tough, trying hard but
not talented enough. Tony Eason, Drew Bledsoe and Parilli each led
the Pats to one championship game, and each lost that one. Bledsoe's
probably the number two, and I'd be tempted to list the Babe at
number three; they were in some ways pretty similar: pocket passers
with big arms who trusted their arms maybe more than they should.
Pats fans tend to put Grogan up there, and ignore Eason who was
basically a two-year wonder, with a bad year in between. Which, as it
happens, was very much the Parilli pattern.

Vito Parilli was
born May 7, 1930, in Rochester Pennsylvania; the fertile area which
produced so many great quarterbacks: Johnny Lujack, John Unitas, Dan
Marino, Jim Kelly, etc. He was recruited by Bear Bryant to play at
Kentucky, where he followed George Blanda. Parilli ran Bear Bryant's
T-formation perfectly, where ball-handling was his first
responsibility; he got the nickname 'Houdini Hands'. His second responsibility may have been running, but he was a good passer
and probably the best QB in the SEC following the time Billy Wade
played tailback at Vanderbilt. He told the story of playing with an injured arm against LSU; Bryant put him what amounted to a shotgun formation, he was never touched, and the Wildcats won the game. He took Kentucky to wins in the '51
Sugar Bowl over undefeated Oklahoma and in the '52 Cotton Bowl over
TCU. Those wins probably put Bryant on the watchlist for SWC teams;
after the '53 season he would be hired by Texas A&M.

The Packers drafted
Parilli with their first pick in the 1952 draft, which was odd since
they had drafted Tobin Rote of Rice with their second pick in 1950.
Rote was a good but erratic passer, and a tremendous runner. Parilli
and Rote shared the job in '52 and combined for 26 TD passes (Babe
13/17 Rote 13/8) which should have augered well for the future. Don't
forget, in these days defenders could contact a receiver from the
line of scrimmage until the pass was actually in the air; completions
were a lot harder to come by. But in '53 Babe slid to 4 TDs and 19
picks; Rote played along with 5/15, meaning they combined for 34
picks with only 9 scores.

The New York Times
said Rote played in Canada in 54-55, but he was actually in the Air
Force, and when he left the Packers traded him to Cleveland in a
package for QB Bobby Garrett of Stanford, whom the Browns has drafted
first overall in the '54 draft. Garrett, it turned out, stuttered.
Scouting wasn't what it is today, and Paul Brown found this too much.
Garrett never started a game, played in a few for the Packers, and
was out of the league. Paul Brown got Parilli because he was looking
ahead to when Otto Graham retired, although Graham's backup, George
Ratterman played well the next two years (in '55 Brown had to lure
Graham back with a huge $25,000 deal). With Graham gone in '56,
Ratterman took over, and in the fourth game suffered a knee injury
that ended his career. Parilli took over, got four starts, and then
was injured himself. Tommy O'Connell played the rest of the year as
the Browns finished the year 5-7, their first-ever losing season.

This was life in the
NFL in the Fifties. Although Parilli had loved Bear Bryant he didn't
really get along with the cutting and sarcastic Paul Brown, so in
1957 Brown traded him. Back to Green Bay. It was 10 player deal that
some say included the rights to Bobby Garrett. This kind of stuff
happened all the time. George Blanda hated Bears' owner/coach George
Halas with a passion, and Halas, whose evaluation and use of
quarterbacks was always suspect (he ruined Johnny Lujack, dumped
Bobby Layne, and dumped on Blanda, all of whom he had at the same
time in the Forties behind Sid Luckman). Anyway, Blanda once traded
Blanda to the Colts, to Blanda's delight, then bought him back a week
later.

The Packers had
picked up Parilli intending to trade him on, so instead they traded
Tobin Rote to the Lions. Bobby Layne got hurt that year, and Rote
stepped in to lead Detroit to an NFL title. Coach George Wilson
decided he didn't like Layne, and the next year he traded him to
Pittsburgh, where the Steelers turned into winners while Rote turned
into a pumpkin, turning in 5TD 19 int passer rating 29.8 season. In
1960 Rote was playing in Toronto, where he threw 38 TD passes and led
the Argos to a divisional title (actually, the championship of the
Inter-Provincial Rugby Football Union).

Parilli mentored and
relieved Bart Starr, a 16th round draft pick, and actually
won the first game at Lambeau Field, then called City Stadium. But
when Vince Lombardi arrived, Parilli was gone. Babe said it was
because he'd beaten Lombardi at golf, and Vince didn't want to pay
him the one dollar bet. He claimed Lombardi told him “that will be
the last dollar you ever get from me.” He landed with Ottawa in the
CFL, but played behind the great Canadian QB Russ Jackson and the
veteran Frank Tripucka. Tripucka's another one of those crazy Fifties stories. He was drafted in the first round by the Eagles in 1949: then traded to Detroit in mid-season without having played a down. You wonder if they scouted him or just figured that a star QB at Notre Dame was worth a first-round pick. The Lions sent him to the hapless Chicago Cardinals, who traded him to the even more hapless Dallas Texans. Tripucka saw the light and bolted for Saskatchewan, where he played for Frank Filchock and, apparently, was making a lot more money than he ever got in the NFL.

But in 1960 the
American Football League was launched, and they needed quarterbacks.
Tripucka had retired and was assistant coach to Filchock in
Denver. After a couple of practices, they realised he was much better
than the guys they had, so he became the starter. Parilli signed with
Oakland, where he shared the job with the starter Tom Flores, a local
product of College of the Pacific who'd been cut by the CFL the year
before. George Blanda was signed by Houston and led them to the
championship, beating Jack Kemp and the Los Angeles Chargers in the
final. Tommy O'Connell resurfaced as the starter in Buffalo, and got
injured in the first quarter of the first game against the New York
Titans, whose starter Dick Jamieson was benched in the first quarter
for Al Dorow.

In 1961 Oakland
traded Parilli to the Boston Patriots, whose QB in 1960 had been
Butch Songin. Songin, a hockey and football star at Boston College,
who had last played football in 1954, for Hamilton in the CFL. That's
the kind of league it was. They split time in '61, but in '62 Parilli
took over and had what may have been the most efficient season of his
career. Completing 55.3% of his passes, 18 touchdowns and only 8
picks, and a passer rating of 91.5, which is probably the equivalent
of something at least ten points higher today. The next year Babe
regressed to 13 scores and 24 picks, but the Patriots went all the
way to the AFL championship game, where the Chargers destroyed them
51-10, with Keith Lincoln having a game for the ages. The Chargers,
whose coach Sid Gillman supposed spied on the Pats to get their game
plan, were quarterbacked by, wait for it, Tobin Rote, whom Gillman
had signed because he'd lost Kemp and thought John Hadl wasn't yet
ready. Rote had suffered his usual reversion to below the norm in
Toronto, and been released after the '62 season.

Parilli had that big
year in '65, then two more typical Parilli years. In 1968 the Pats
traded him to the Jets for Mike Taliaferro, who had lost his job to
Joe Namath. Namath was from Beaver Falls, Pa, about five miles away
from Rochester, and the first quarterback he idolized growing up was
Babe Parilli. Parilli was a perfect backup for the Jets; under Weeb
Ewbank he was consistent when he had to play. He did the holding so
Namath didn't have to risk injury, and the New York press made as
much of his ball handling as Jim Turner's holder as the football
writers had made of his ball-handling at Kentucky. When the Jets won
Super Bowl III, Parilli got his championship ring at last, and as an
AFL original, and as a typical gypsy QB of the NFL's Fifties, he
deserved it.

After the 1969
season, Babe retired. He was a quarterbacks coach for the hometown
Steelers, mentoring Terry Bradshaw (whose first few seasons' stats
could be mistake for a Parilli years). He then coached in the World Football League, and
later for many teams in the Arena League, which was the kind of game made for the Babe Parillis and Tobin Rotes of the 50s NFL. He retired to Colorado,
where he died July 15th. RIP.